Below is a trailer for a National Film Board of Canada documentary entitled "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen" from 1965. Although Cohen would go on to great fame as a folk singer, he was only known as a poet at this point.
You may know his work by way of his INSANELY FAMOUS composition "Hallelujah", which has been covered by the likes of John Cale, Jeff Buckley, K.D. Lang, Rufus Wainwright and Alexandra Burke (who performed it on the UK televison program, X-Factor; Burke went on to have a #1
Christmas hit in the UK with the song.)
Jeff Buckley:
K.D. Lang (at the opening of the Vancouver Olympics):
Rufus Wainwright (from Shrek):
Alexandra Burke (on X-Factor):
The following poem is from Leonard Cohen's second collection of poetry, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961):
A Kite Is a Victim
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
So make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Ouliopo
Poetry is, by its nature, a broad and open-ended affair, but it can also be governed by rules of form. Some of these rules are related to genres and kinds of poems, lines, or metres (rhythmic syllables,) but others are what we call "enabling restraints" and are really more like rules for a creative game than anything else.
A group of European writers in the middle of the 20th century were inspired to use different rules and restraints to push their writing into strange, sometimes absurd, territory. They were called "Oulipo" (Ouvroir de litterature potentielle - roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature") and they would challenge each other to write pieces using arbitrary rules and restrictions.
A contemporary poet who is directly inspired by Oulipo is Calgary's Christian Bok. He has written a book of poetry called Eunoia. Eunoia is composed of five chapter, each using only words that contain a single vowel. Here's what it looks like:
from Chapter I
(for Dick Higgins)
Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink
this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,
disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks – impish
hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib?
Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits,
writing shtick which might instill priggish misgiv-
ings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit-
picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I
bitch; I kibitz – griping whilst criticizing dimwits,
Now, we're going to do an exercise that those wacky Oulipo people came up with. It's called a "Slugogram". ("Slugging" is a proofreading term that originally refers to the process of running your eyes down the right hand margins of two texts from two different printings to make sure that no differences between them.) This is how it works:
Select a book from the pile.
Turn to page 23 (why 23? why not?); if your page 23 is very short or is otherwise not ideal, turn to page 46.
Write down the words that touch the right hand margin of each line (include those words that break and continue onto the next line.)
Write a poem with these words without changing the order in which they appear on the page.
You may add up to 12 words of your own to connect words and shape your poem; you may cut up to six words; add punctuation and change number (singular, plural) as you like.
Have fun and be prepared to share!
Here's an example of a Slugogram I made:
The words below come from the right-hand margin of page 23 of John Updike’s S.
In order to compose my poem, I added twelve words of my own (and eliminated one) to make everything “hang together”.
wrong
whereas
him
nature
calls
grass
also
other
wry
when
did
my
as
worry
think
before of
the
above
the
mermaid
from
portholes
that
dabbed-on
a
that
continuing
but
be
“Mistaken Mermaids”
Wrong!
Whereas to him Nature calls grass (also others)
Wry worry thinks before and Forswears the above
The mermaid, seen from portholes
That are as dabbed-on as a movie set, Is continuing
But, aye, she be sham
You may know his work by way of his INSANELY FAMOUS composition "Hallelujah", which has been covered by the likes of John Cale, Jeff Buckley, K.D. Lang, Rufus Wainwright and Alexandra Burke (who performed it on the UK televison program, X-Factor; Burke went on to have a #1
Christmas hit in the UK with the song.)
Jeff Buckley:
K.D. Lang (at the opening of the Vancouver Olympics):
Rufus Wainwright (from Shrek):
Alexandra Burke (on X-Factor):
The following poem is from Leonard Cohen's second collection of poetry, The Spice-Box of Earth (1961):
A Kite Is a Victim
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
So make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Ouliopo
Poetry is, by its nature, a broad and open-ended affair, but it can also be governed by rules of form. Some of these rules are related to genres and kinds of poems, lines, or metres (rhythmic syllables,) but others are what we call "enabling restraints" and are really more like rules for a creative game than anything else.
A group of European writers in the middle of the 20th century were inspired to use different rules and restraints to push their writing into strange, sometimes absurd, territory. They were called "Oulipo" (Ouvroir de litterature potentielle - roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature") and they would challenge each other to write pieces using arbitrary rules and restrictions.
A contemporary poet who is directly inspired by Oulipo is Calgary's Christian Bok. He has written a book of poetry called Eunoia. Eunoia is composed of five chapter, each using only words that contain a single vowel. Here's what it looks like:
from Chapter I
(for Dick Higgins)
Writing is inhibiting. Sighing, I sit, scribbling in ink
this pidgin script. I sing with nihilistic witticism,
disciplining signs with trifling gimmicks – impish
hijinks which highlight stick sigils. Isn’t it glib?
Isn’t it chic? I fit childish insights within rigid limits,
writing shtick which might instill priggish misgiv-
ings in critics blind with hindsight. I dismiss nit-
picking criticism which flirts with philistinism. I
bitch; I kibitz – griping whilst criticizing dimwits,
sniping whilst indicting nitwits, dismissing simplis-
tic thinking, in which philippic wit is still illicit.
You can find more excerpts from Eunoia here.
Now, we're going to do an exercise that those wacky Oulipo people came up with. It's called a "Slugogram". ("Slugging" is a proofreading term that originally refers to the process of running your eyes down the right hand margins of two texts from two different printings to make sure that no differences between them.) This is how it works:
Here's an example of a Slugogram I made:
The words below come from the right-hand margin of page 23 of John Updike’s S.
In order to compose my poem, I added twelve words of my own (and eliminated one) to make everything “hang together”.
whereas
him
nature
calls
grass
also
other
wry
when
did
my
as
worry
think
before
of
the
above
the
mermaid
from
portholes
that
dabbed-on
a
that
continuing
but
be
“Mistaken Mermaids”
Wrong!
Whereas to him Nature calls grass (also others)
Wry worry thinks before and
Forswears the above
The mermaid, seen from portholes
That are as dabbed-on as a movie set,
Is continuing
But, aye, she be sham